Eric Maisel - A Writers Space: Make room to dream, to work, to write

A WRITERS SPACE
Make Room to Dream, to Work, to Write

ERIC MAISEL, PH.D.

Copyright 2008 by Eric Maisel, Ph.D.
All rights reserved.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any
form without permission from the publisher; exceptions are
made for brief excerpts used in published reviews.

Published by
Adams Media, an F+W Publications Company
57 Littlefield Street, Avon, MA 02322. U.S.A.
www.adamsmedia.com

ISBN-10: 1-59869-460-X
ISBN-13: 978-1-59869-460-4
eISBN: 978-1-44051-478-4

Printed in the United States of America.

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Interior illustration by Grant Hanna.

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For Ann,
Who for thirty years has provided the right space

CONTENTS

IX. EPILOGUE: CREATIVE SPACE:
A WRITING FABLE

PART I
Physical Space

CHAPTER 1
Thinking about Your Writing Space

O ther books for writers will tell you where to insert the commas and why your Parisian character shouldnt wear a beret unless hes Basque. I want to chat with you about some other things: how to get into the right space to write, how to orient and organize your neurons, how to sanctify and enliven your physical space, and how to create imagined spaces in which magic can happen.

In the thirty-six chapters that compose this book Ill use the metaphor of space to communicate how you can get a grip on your writing life and transform yourself from an occasional writer to a regular writer. My job, as I see it, is to cheerlead, to whip you into a frenzy, and once in a while to make you smile. Naturally, you will have to do the actual work.

Lets begin with your physical space, the place where you write. Should your desk face the door? Should it face the wall? What if your right shoulder faces the door and your desk is slightly to the north of the rooms only window? Should you keep books in your room or are they in league with the devil? Should your computer be stripped of its e-mail capabilities and of any software that can produce a game of solitaire? Should you wear pajamas or a business suit? Should you keep a second office in one of those urban writing centers (some with a two-year waiting list) where you go to really write? Should your walls be Navajo white, cream-colored, or Chinese red? Should your chair swivel? Should your head?

Are these the right questions?

Think of a hospital operating room. You wouldnt want your surgeon distracted by the view, would you? If that operating room overlooked the ocean, you would hope that someone would have the good sense to pull the curtains, so as to prevent glare and a roving eye. Amy Tan, for instance, explained that she writes in a very womblike place. She has two offices, one in New York and one in San Francisco. The one in New York is a former closet with low ceilings and her office in San Francisco has a window she keeps covered with drapes to block out the view. I cannot deal with distractions, she confessed. I had a beautiful office with views of the Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay but my assistant, Ellen, has that office now.

Like a surgeon, your goal is to focus. You want to muster your resources and canalize your energy. As a general rule a large space dissipates energy, noise produces distraction, views rob the mind of neurons, toys cry out to be played with, and even a book near at hand is a reason to stop early. Of course you are permitted messes, piles of papers, shelves of books, iconic snow globes and photographs, and a view of the garden. However, your goal is to canalize your energy and have your brain connect to your fingers in such a seamless way that words appear on your computer screen by magic. For this to happen, your best bet is simplicity: a little quiet, a little organization, and a little reverence.

Maybe church is a better analogy than an operating room.

You will do better work with a quiet room, a closed door, a serene view or no view at all, a little organization (and all the mess you like), and that feeling in your heart that you are in the only church you need, the one where you pray poems and praise prose. What does a church need? Does it really need all that Gothic grandiosity or ornate rococo cake decoration? Or does it need just a bench, silence, and a little awe? That is all your writing space needs: a chair, a table, silence, and a little awe. Add anything else you like, if it serves you; but dont forget this simple ideal.

You also want the kind of organization that allows you to move as fluidly as you can from idea to idea, from chapter to chapter, from file to file, from story to story, from heartbeat to heartbeat. An extreme example of this organizational nicety was Isaac Asimovs. He attributed the fact that he was able to write 500 books during his career to the way he set up his officewith tables all around the perimeter, each with several typewriters on it. Each typewriter stood ready for a different project and he would just work my way around the room. You need not go this far, but you do need to know where to reach when you are looking for Chapter 3 or those notes for that essay on Byzantium.

Everythingthe wallpaper, the cobwebs, the size of your fontis for the sake of your current project. You want to be reminded of and enveloped by that rich, new project, not by some past disaster (or success) or some future vibration. Alice Hoffman, for instance, paints her office a different color every time she starts a new book, one that resonates with the books themes, and sets out items that remind her of that book. You are a serially monogamous writer, in love with this precious new thing: let your space show it.

That great Greenwich Village character Joe Gould, portrayed in a famous Alice Neel painting with three penises, wrote seven million words in his crazy career as an oral historian and street person. He accomplished this prodigious feat without ever having a home writing space or even a home. He wrote on park benches, under awnings during rainstorms, sitting on the curb, and, of course, in cafs, where sometimes he was hired by the caf proprietor at the cost of a cup of coffee and a pastry to write and look Bohemian. Unfortunately, they were seven million words of psychotic ramblings. Might he have done better work with a quiet room of his own (and some mental health)? I think so.

You want a quiet room (and some mental health). You may also write in airports, in Paris, on top of a mountain, at the laundry, and with Beethoven blaring. You will of course want to write whenever it strikes you to write, wherever you happen to be, and whether you have your best pen with you or only your purple lipstick. But let us agree on this basic proposition: chair, table, closed door, a computer or a pad, a little awe, a little love, maybe the shades drawn, and your brain humming. That is your physical space, and your church service.